Garage-sale season starts in the spring, but summer brings out the crowds looking for deals. The weekly search for stuff doesn't wane until September.

Saturday is the biggest day each week for sales, followed by Friday and Thursday. Though the yard sale business backs off a little on holiday weekends, most weeks typically bring far more than 100 sales, advertised in newspaper classifieds and on free-standing signs on street corners around the metro.

We tagged along several frequent shoppers last week to get their takes on how to find deals, where to go and what sort of items they seek in the exhausting, weekly hunt for bargains.

What a way to spend a weekend, selling your good junk for real cash! Just put it out, set down and wait for the customers to give you their money...

Seriously, now. If you've ever had one garage sale, you probably look forward to the next with a mixture of dread and excitement. It's great to get rid of the clutter, and especially great if you can exchange it for some cold cash - but it's a lot of work! There is no way around it.

You can get tired, cold or hot according to the weather, hungry, thirsty and impatient in the space of a few hours... then the hours, which seemed perfectly acceptable when you wrote the ad, can drag on and on and on...

So the first rule of order is to make yourself comfortable. Cook ahead of time or plan on having sandwiches. Plan on sharing time "on the floor" with someone else. Never have a garage sale alone. You'll need someone else to take over while you eat or answer the phone or change into warmer or cooler clothing, but you will also need to take breaks without having to do anything.

This may be one of my favorite garage sale signs ever. I found this image via Flickr while doing my rounds and just had to post it. I have never seen such an artsy fartsy sign. Definetly would have caught my eye.

Garage sales are no stranger to east Idaho. Sellers want to make a few extra dollars off their old stuff. And buyers are looking for a little garage sale gold.

Reporter Ashli Kimenker followed two women who have been going out every Saturday for 18 years, to learn the tricks of the trade.

Dena and Siri have been friends for over 30 years and every Saturday they go shopping together. But these two women aren't mall rats, they are garage sale junkies.

Over their 18 years of "garage sale-ing" they have learned a lot, and today they shared some of it with me. Dena earned over a thousand dollars at her last garage sale and told me how.

Dena Ruffridge, garage sale shopper: "Just be organized, have everything priced, clean. People will buy your stuff if it's been washed and cleaned and it looks like something you would want to buy at a store."

Garage sales can be a lot of work, so why should someone take the time of hosting their own garage sale?

I've seen a lot of good garage sale signs. Big ones that you could never miss. Creative ones - a woman once attached a huge cutout of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas to her sign. You wanted to go to that sale just to see what she had to offer! I've seen professional signs, the kind you can buy pre-made at the business-supply store. But I've never seen the likes of the garage sale sign I saw the other day.

"Well, I see home builders do it all the time. So I thought I'd put him out there with a sign," says Gilbert resident Scott Simas.

The land broker decided to have his gardener skip the bushes on this particular Saturday and planted him on a street corner beckoning people to his sale.

Roberto Jorae didn't mind holding the sign at all, but he did say it was a new experience.

"This is the first time I've done this. But it's OK. I've got my water and even shade."

So, of course, this is one sale I just couldn't miss. I followed Roberto's sign and drove down the street to the sale. When I mentioned the unique garage sale advertising style to the homeowner, turns out I was spilling the beans to his wife. Oops!

"That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time." -- George Carlin

The house is stuffed with stuff. The closets a e basement is stuffed. The garage is so stuffed we had to rent a room for the extra stuff, and the room is stuffed too.

Too much stuff, I announced. We're having a garage sale. Every great retail fortune has to start somewhere.

Sam Walton started out with a single dime store. Bob Nardelli came to Home Depot from GE and pocketed $256 million in six years. How hard could it be?

Day One: I put an ad in the paper. I made some signs. I opened the garage door and was almost killed by the avalanche. I started sorting stuff.

There was lawn equipment. There were tools. There was lumber. There were piles of old clothes. There were dozens of carefully mislabeled boxes.

I hauled stuff to Goodwill. I hauled stuff to the curb. I re-shelved stuff to keep. I set out tables full of stuff to sell: baby clothes and baby beds, books, a ceramic cow, clocks, kitchen utensils and pots and pans, an old stereo with a dual tape deck. (One deck was broken, but hey, who listens to cassettes anymore?)

Continue Reading"That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time." -- George Carlin

The house is stuffed with stuff. The closets a e basement is stuffed. The garage is so stuffed we had to rent a room for the extra stuff, and the room is stuffed too.

Too much stuff, I announced. We're having a garage sale. Every great retail fortune has to start somewhere.

Sam Walton started out with a single dime store. Bob Nardelli came to Home Depot from GE and pocketed $256 million in six years. How hard could it be?

Day One: I put an ad in the paper. I made some signs. I opened the garage door and was almost killed by the avalanche. I started sorting stuff.

There was lawn equipment. There were tools. There was lumber. There were piles of old clothes. There were dozens of carefully mislabeled boxes.

I hauled stuff to Goodwill. I hauled stuff to the curb. I re-shelved stuff to keep. I set out tables full of stuff to sell: baby clothes and baby beds, books, a ceramic cow, clocks, kitchen utensils and pots and pans, an old stereo with a dual tape deck. (One deck was broken, but hey, who listens to cassettes anymore?)